Volker Schlöndorff, generally considered one of the world’s greatest film directors, began his career as an assistant to Louis Malle and Alain Resnais. His film version of Musil’s Der junge Törless (1966) was the first in a series of literary adaptations, which was to develop into a unique cinematic ‘European memory’.

He received the highest praise worldwide for films such as Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (after Böll, 1973), Die Blechtrommel (Grass, 1979, rewarded with an Oscar and a Golden Palm), Eine Liebe von Swann (Proust, 1984), Death of a Salesman (Miller, 1985), and The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood, 1990). Both his more politically inspired films, such as Der neunte Tag (2004) and Strajk (2008), and his opera direction have similarly attracted great public attention.

With his ‘timeless’ films, Volker Schlöndorff, who in 2008 published his autobiography Licht, Schatten und Bewegung, essentially stands for half a century of German, and thus European, history: the Wirtschaftswunder, the revolt of the 1960s, the ‘German Autumn’, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

IMDB: Volker Schlöndorff
YouTube: Clip from Der Junge Törless